Thursday, May 19, 2005

Other battles, other polls

Hizonner the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, is, as we know, a fervent europhile. He supports the Constitution, the euro, the idea that Britain should be on BST permanently because, according to him that will put us in line with the Continent (he, clearly, notices nothing when he goes on one of his jollies) and so on, and so on.

Though he does not support the immunity accorded to Europol officers, without knowing much about it.

However, the Constitution is not his only project. There is the 2012 Olympic bid, in support of which he announces ever higher popular support. Unfortunately, only 1.2 million people have put supportive signatures on the website and we are not quite clear who they are. Perhaps, they are all French tourists.

The arguments against that wretched enterprise are growing so Hizonner commissioned a poll, which, unsurprisingly, came up with the right result. But its methodology is of some interest to those who find it valuable to study how propaganda is created.